French Cinema’s Success in Britain

mayo 19, 2013septiembre 29, 2015

By Maëlle Alquezar

French cinema has managed to break all previous records in the UK. French-made or French language films have experienced a 157% increase in terms of attendance in 2012 compared to 2011, which was the most successful year for the French box office for the past decade.

According to the cinema organisation Unifrance, in charge of promoting French movies abroad, 8 million tickets were sold in Britain last year. The French film industry represented 4.6% of the British market. The Oscar-winning film The Artist was not the only key to this success. Other films such as The Untouchables, Amour or even Rust and Bone did very well and formed a part of the French cinema industry’s successful line-up.

London still ranks first in terms of the number of people who watch foreign-language movies. According to Charlotte Saluard, the Director of Programming at Cine Lumiere in London, 70% of her cinema’s audience is British. Moreover, new cities such as Manchester, Glasgow or Liverpool are seeing more and more people come to their cinemas to watch French films.

2012 was considered a special year for French cinema in Britain. But what does this mean for 2013? Luckily for UK cinema goers, more and more French film distributors will be exporting their films, in the hope of receiving the same level of success.

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